Wednesday, April 23, 2014

It's the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth and the 398th anniversary of his death. At least, it's when we celebrate it. Putting foolish questions of authorship aside, William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, traditionally performed three days after birth. And Elizabethans used the Julian calendar; under the Gregorian one, the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth/death is May 3. Coincidentally, that's Lady Hotspur's birthday too!

Still, I come here to praise Shakespeare, not to bury him. But as
much as I love his plays, the problems I have with them are many, deep, and they do keep me up at night.
Shakespeare is big on a rural aristocracy, while the urban multitudes disgust
him; I’m pretty much the opposite. And we disagree about authority—state,
domestic, religious, you name it. Some of his worldviews I can appreciate
intellectually, like the redemption of Christ—until he relates it to Jews. He
writes strong female roles but often to nasty purposes.

Shakespeare’s
social assumptions are deeply embedded in his plays, such that you can’t
extricate the pros from the cons. Yet many politically-minded productions try
to modernize the plays in just that fashion. Orson Welles famously turned Julius Caesar into an anti-fascist play
in 1938, but most directors can't match that audacity and talent.It’s difficult to pull off a political
take on Shakespeare that doesn’t violate the play itself—usually the solution is to consciously subvert
it. So I appreciate how well Arin Arbus and her company (at Theater for a New Audience) fit an impulse to social engagement into their King
Lear.

photo: Carol Rosegg

Arbus
and dramaturg Jonathan Kalb don’t shoehorn new material into the already
titanic script.Instead, they retain
a few beats that usually get cut. The speech that perked my ears was during the
tempest of Act 3. Lear (Michael Pennington) is left alone onstage while Kent
and the Fool look for shelter. The king, at the brink of madness, says to
himself:

Poor
naked wretches, whereso'er you are,That
bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How
shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your
looped and windowed raggedness, defend youFrom
seasons such as these? O, I have ta'enToo
little care of this! Take physic, pomp;Expose
thyself to feel what wretches feel,That
thou mayst shake the superﬂux to them,And
show the heavens more just.

It’s
the play’s second mention of a destitute underclass (earlier, Edgar imitates a
beggar; he enters in that disguise immediately after this speech), and implies
a population of indigents haunting Lear’s kingdom. Pennington’s delivery of “I
have ta’en too little care of this!” suggests that Lear momentarily gains a
social conscience as part of his harrowing.

The
last 3½ lines are hard to parse, but Pennington clarifies them admirably. His Lear
aligns himself with the poor naked wretches, and urges other aristos (“pomp”)
to join him, so they too may help (“shake the superflux”, or excess riches). He
reads “just” to mean “justice”, which implies that charity will shame the
heavens into better treatment of the hungry, poor, and homeless.

photo: Carol Rosegg

Pennington
and Arbus use the soliloquy’s format, a form of audience address, to put the
viewers in the position of Lear’s apostrophized aristos. Houseless heads and
unfed sides have increased in New York City, against national trends. It’s a
rare Shakespearean production that can remind its audience of that, and a
successful one that can do so without imposing a modern interpretation over a
play built upon very different social and economic assumptions. But the
opportunity is there. By foregrounding it, Arbus, Pennington, and Kalb make
Shakespeare matter.

I’ll
just mention another beat that counters the feudal rigidity that’s so alien to
the modern viewer. Later in act 3, a servant stabs his own lord to prevent the
blinding of Gloucester. Most productions frame his motivation as a reaction to
horror: fair enough. But in the context of Arbus’ Lear it’s a moment of populist revolution, as a man chooses ethics
over fealty. A few moments later at the scene’s end, Kalb and Arbus salvage
another beat from the cuts: one of the servant’s fellows resolves to help
Gloucester to first aid and a guide:

Second servantLet’s
follow the old Earl and get the bedlamTo
lead him where he would. His roguish madnessAllows
itself to anything.

Third servantGo
thou. I’ll fetch some flax and whites of eggsTo
apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!

This
beat, in a rough quarto but not the Folio, is one of the few altruistic actions
in a very dark play. By retaining it, Arbus and Kalb illuminate Lear’s nihilism. In these subtle ways,
Arbus and her company make Shakespeare matter. The result is a profound piece of social conscience as well as a work of great tragedy.

About Me

I'm a freelance critic and dramaturg living in the NYC area (and available for hire!). I believe that plays should challenge the intellect and tickle the wit as well as stimulate the senses. They should tackle the most urgent social, political, and cultural subjects.
My tastes often run towards classic work but they also pull towards the avant-garde. My greatest challenge is to square my love for classics with an urge to look forward.
Also, I seek out theater with elements of science and science fiction onstage. My love for these themes and tropes stems from a belief that they're essential to understanding and reflecting life in the 21st century. Sci fi is also a popular narrative form that can champion free and unconventional thinking and inclusiveness.